A court in Dublin has heard how a chance encounter on a mobile phone resulted in a soldier having unlawful sexual relations with a teenage girl.
The Army corporal who had sex with the 16-year-old girl will be sentenced later after evidence was given yesterday at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Paul Collins (52), Mourne Road, Drimnagh, pleaded guilty to unlawful carnal knowledge at Upper Cross Hotel, Rathmines on August 27th, 2005 and possession of child pornography between April and December 2005.
Garda Leanne Murphy told Garnet Orange, prosecuting, that in 2002 the girl dialled the wrong number while trying to ring her mother. She inadvertently made contact with Collins and messages and texts were exchanged "intermittently" between them and then stopped.
The communication began again in 2005 when she was 16 and Collins was 50. She agreed to meet him in Dublin and sent sexually explicit photographs of herself to his mobile.
Garda Murphy agreed with Remy Farrell, defending, that the sending of pictures "arose in a consensual context".
The girl travelled from her home in the midlands to meet Collins in July 2005 but nothing untoward happened. In August 2005 he met her at Heuston station and took her to a hotel in Rathmines. They had a drink and then went to a bedroom and had consensual sexual intercourse.
After the incident the girl met friends on the train home who became aware of what had happened and told a teacher. The teacher spoke to the girl and then contacted gardaí.
Garda Murphy said Collins was a corporal stationed at Rathmines barracks. He was separated but living with his former partner and had no children. He made a voluntary statement in which he accepted that he had sex with the girl when she was 16.
Garda Murphy agreed with Mr Farrell that when Collins received pictures of the girl he asked her if she was 19 and she said yes. At their first meeting he discovered she was 16, became annoyed and broke off contact with her. She continued to send him messages and after a period he renewed contact with her.
They agreed to meet a second time and Garda Murphy said it was clear to both that they would have sex. She said the girl had originally initiated contact with Collins and continued to send him messages after he told her to stop. She also said the girl had been "boastful" about the incident when she met friends on the train and that the sex was not only consensual but that she had "actively pursued" Collins.
Mr Farrell said his client had regretted his actions every day since and suggested that had it not been for the unlikely manner in which the pair had made contact that he would not have "engaged in this conduct".
Mr Farrell told Judge Katherine Delahunt that Collins had €10,000 available as compensation to the victim and he had entered an early plea of guilty.
Mr Farrell said that a psychologist's report indicated that the girl suffered from personal difficulties before the incident and was a vulnerable person who had been taken advantage of.
Judge Delahunt remanded Collins on continuing bail.